Splitting of the Real
by Haibara Ai z
Summary: She hands them a shallow mug. "It's water, but you can blend in. You're representing the crown, so go party like you are." Ishval is happening again, and Ed seems to be the only one intent on stopping it. Except- this time, Ed will have to do it as Al falls in love and moves on. Part political drama, part supernatural. Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1- War and Peace

Chapter 1: War

* * *

The room is spinning and war has broken out. Ed thinks he hears Al shout, but the words are dulled by a close detonation. Shredded marble gushes forth. He holds steadfast, digging his heels into the floor made malleable.

"The crystal Al! Shit! Get the— thing!"

Debris muddies his vision. But he can see blurs of movement- grappling bodies, the cool light of enemy alchemy, half-erect pillars, the crumbling throne. And a sword, like a stalking shark, angling towards him without losing any of its momentum.

Driving right at his neck.

_There aren't supposed to be weapons. There aren't supposed to be weapons. There aren't even_—

This was supposed to be routine. In the list of mundane bullshit, it went paperwork, reports, and diplomatic attendance. Being a "magic monkey," Roy called it. There to march about in a well-pressed uniform giving firm— but not overly aggressive— handshakes to foreign dignitaries, reminding them that Amestris did, yes, indeed, have human nuclear weapons they could just as easily parade out of this cocktail party and into battle.

_The only difference_— Ed's head throbs trying to remember Riza's brief— _was the foreign power_— and its rapidly changing status in the eyes of Amestris. As long as Ed can remember, their guests— the Goreans— have been a distant slave colony, squashed into servitude by the more politically notable nation of Xing. A textbook morality tale on the pitfalls of nonviolence. Shit, before today, the only kid he'd seen with those elongated features had been grovelling at a West Side breadline, refusing to trade religious trinkets to pad his gut.

_Then, the Goreans had an uprising. Like Ishval, but if the Ishvalans had priests that could chant you to forever-sleep._ Somewhere along the line, they'd set their spiritual teachers to the business of establishing their own nationhood. And the results were chilling. Ed had no idea life could be snipped so cleanly. It was some kind of alchemy, he was sure. But, unlike Roy's all-corroding burn, or the way Scar curdles your inner organs, a death by Gorean alchemy wasn't at all messy. It would swathe you in healing light- and you'd just _be _unmade. Moments ago, they'd seen Sergeant Fuery's face sink into the-

_Fuck. It was going so well._

He hadn't even been thinking about the peace. That's how well the two sides got on. Ed and Al had been darting about, making polite conversation. Al was particularly charmed by the way Goreans mirrored the Amestrians to fit in: by slouching a bit lower to match their height, by articulating a bit more fervently, by drinking less responsibly. The Amestrians, too, had been gentler to accommodate their visitors. And as barrels were uncorked, and Amestrians noted the attractiveness of their visitors, they'd all melded together in a blushing clump of locals and foreigners, pawing too liberally at each other, forgetful of origin.

Ed remembers the flirtations. He remembers catching snippets of conversation between Sergeant Fuery and a diplomat, on his "revolutionary filing system" which combines the "intuition of the Carmel-Pollard system" with the "depth of the Ernheart system," which he assumes is "wanna screw?" for nerds.

He'd also seen a group of female clerical workers swamp an objectively attractive Gorean. And he'd seen Roy, not admitting to feeling challenged, but instead dragging priestess after priestess into a smooth waltz, their robes blooming about.

It was impressive. Infuriatingly so. And it's what distracted Riza long enough for them to sneak out.

Ed hadn't really expected to be watched so closely. That alone should have betrayed the importance of this particular event. After the ceremonies, as soon as he and Al felt for the door, they found Riza instead. They realized then that she, and every other adult they knew, had been tracking them out of the corner of their eyes for hours.

In typical Riza fashion, her tone was stern, but belied by a big sisterliness she couldn't shroud. "This is sensitive. Behave." Riza said, already softening. She handed them a shallow mug. "It's water, but you can blend in. You're representing the crown, so go party like you are."

Al cracked some cute joke about not having kidneys. Riza laughed, unmoved.

And when she turned and walked away, Ed had felt the whole room watching him, like a lidless hive.

That's when he knew he was going to get to that goddamn crystal.

That crystal- it looked like something an ancient queen would find nestled in the maw of an underwater ruin: blue, brilliant, and impossibly spherical, but then the light would shift, and an angular facet would appear. Then another. Or a thousand. A thousand facets, fragmenting the crystal's surface and multiplying until they melded again into one, smooth, ball.

When Al first saw light shatter along its infinite sides, Ed heard him daydream out loud: "Morphing, changing…" Both felt that there was an alchemic presence to it that dwarfed any common quartz they'd pursued in the past.

And the fact that the Goreans had marched it out on an altar to dance about in crystal-worship. Every visiting nation crammed in an obsolete tradition or two. But this- this felt gorged with the _now_. Priestesses prayed with the grace of their step, fluffing layers of tulle about themselves, every gesture labored, every breath measured. Once he actually tuned into the hymns, he realized that Goreans held some real beliefs about the power of this thing. That it-

_...opened the eye of the seeker… caught the tongue of the perjurer…_

A Truth Telling crystal. That's what's getting him killed at this very moment.

Having fumbled a last attempt to slant the floor beneath his attacker and thwart his sure blow, Ed readies himself for the dig- the plunging of metal into the nape of his neck; the severing of his spine.

Except nothing comes. The striking sword clatters to the ground, cooked.

And he hears that goddamn voice. "You're letting up, Fullmetal. He wasn't even an alchemist."

"Oh fuck off." Ed knows he isn't at the top of his game today.

Though, while today and the unusual bullshittery of the last hour played a role, truth be told, he's been out of it for the last while.

In part— It's his growing fatigue for military life, which, patterned like any other profession, has shrunk around his shoulders like an ill-fitting shirt. It's that there have been so few leads on the philosopher's stone in the last while that it's begun to feel like a figment of his imagination. And it's his disillusionment with just how much bureaucracy and petty politics dictate his job.

He really does feel like a dog. Hearing that nickname has begun to bite.

"Brother!" Al calls, "Are— Are you okay?" Al trembles, coming up towards him.

Shell shocked, Ed reassures his brother as best he can. "It's okay. Let's seriously just find that crystal."

He says this, but the brothers aren't actually 'finding' the crystal. They know who last held it, and they know where that person— or rather that person's body— is.

Her body was the first to drop.

Chief Corne's imposing corpse lies near the throne, 6 feet nine of cascading medals. She wasn't actually too tall for a Gorean, but her broadness and the ease with which she moved— those lent her a sense of sexless magnetism.

So approaching her now feels a little like closing in on a mountain in the horizon. Even in death, she feels larger than life. Her limbs splayed and her eyes glass, she is still the peoples' champion.

Ed keeps replaying their conversation in his mind. They'd had one. Just one exchange. When they'd finally slipped away in their fretful search for the crystal, Ed and Al had stumbled in on the woman— alone.

"The stuff outside- it's not up to your underage drinking standard?" The first thing Chief Corne said paralyzed them in place. All her medals tinkled. "Your King's shitting his pantaloons. Maybe shouldn't have brought the Truth Teller."

Ed pointed to the crystal. This?

"I know. Who ever thought truth and diplomacy would go together? It's just that in this particular case, the waft of bullshit is too strong to ignore. Hope you don't take offense." Corne took a swig of whiskey. "I'm a talker, sorry. Sit down. I want to grasp…" she made a 'that' gesture towards the other couch.

They sat and the velvet didn't give way like it should. Made for larger people, Ed guessed.

"You're not kids, I can tell that much."

Ed warmed at that. Between the crystal and his general admiration for the woman, he felt raw and yielding. "We're not. We're alchemists. I'm Ed, he's Al."

"Tell me, Ed and Al, your people, despite all the annexing and espionage committed by their Fuhrer—they don't like war, do they?" Her eyes crinkled prettily, and it's the first time they noticed the elegance of her Gorean features. It really was as if her presence eclipsed any particular detail. Even now, remembering every word uttered and ever idiom chosen, Ed couldn't tell you the colour of her eyes.

"No people like war." He responded.

"Wrong. Goreoo loves war right now. War is new, war is fresh. War is suffering, but we've suffered before. So what? Suffering with victory- now that's different. That's a political platform. That's the spark of change."

"It's a chest full of medals," challenged Ed.

"Exactly," picked up Corne, "I mean, I'm painting a civilization with a single stroke. We've got peace in our bones, we do. The priestly asshats remind me every day."

"We didn't think Goreans would ever fight."

She leaned forward and looked even larger than before. "You never thought about us at all."

Al shook his head: "That's not true."

"It's okay, we were a sad, forgettable footnote to the East Pacific war. What I really want to know is what the barmaid gossip is, and I don't think I'm cute enough to charm it out of a local," she smiled gruffly, "so— are your people itching for a fight?"

Ed paused. "No," he finally squeezed out, "no, I think our fighters are tired. I know we look all shiny and warmongering, but…"

"Guilty," said Al, "They feel guilty, or at least the ones who last fought against the Ishvalans feel that way."

Chief Corne sighed contentedly. "Amestrians have a heart. That's galloping news." She set her glass onto the desk and took the blue crystal into her hands. "Alright, screw off before Bradley gets back. Thanks boys."

They tore themselves away from the room, and the last thing they saw was the blue disappear into her right pocket.

_The right pocket._

Ed reaches for it.

And his fingers brush up against shards. The crystal is there, but— not whole. Fractured light ground to fractured stone. Drained of that vibrant blue, it's just gravel against his fingers.

"Shit. The crystal broke." Bile fills him. Before he processes the frustration, his own fingernails score the skin of his palm. "It was fake. Costume jewellery."

"Don't worry, Brother, it was just a guess! Even if it, um, didn't turn out to be anything, nothing is really lost."

_Except that was our ticket out,_ thinks Ed. Without the philosopher's stone, Ed and Al are bound to the gig. And, in this very instance, that means that whatever fuck-up happened today— they're a part of it.

Air envelops Ed, stifling and fleshy. The final — 'BRAP! BRAP!' — of gunfire jars him, and the room feels real again, filling his senses. It's quiet, he realizes. For a moment now, the room has been full and quiet. The deafening silence of a battle won.

"Sorry but, well what's going to happen now?" Al asks Roy.

_What will happen now? _What _would _happen now that they'd killed dozens of Gorean diplomats? Diplomats who'd just seen their war hero shot in cold blood. Who'd had every right in their mind to retaliate. Remembering Corne's slack jaw and sudden collapse, nausea coagulates in the pit of his stomach. Ed has seen this— and the remaining spectrum of vile shit one human can do to another—before. But the deaths that awaken such profound unease within him are always the unjust ones.

Ed had felt her fall in love with the idea of an Amestrian-Gorean alliance. A war hero with a true moral backbone— that shit is rare. It's precious. In short, it screwed hard with Ed's sense of what should and should not happen in the world. _This _should not have happened. Not to her, not to the rest of them. Ed cannot bring himself to condemn the ensuing attacks. He can only imagine what he'd do if a foreign soldier shot _his _colonel—

That's what it looked like to the Goreans: an ambush to take out their most lauded commander. A foreign blue-coat murdering their own.

Ed still can't match the face to the deed. He knows that when he whipped away from the body and traced the 'crack!' back into the crowd, all the way to a wheezing barrel— that, poised behind the pistol, he found…

_Major Sergeant Fuery._

But fuck if that makes sense to him. No one's made a peep about it yet, especially tight-lipped Roy.

Already, Ed's mind has started to go to work on piecing together the murder. The deep unease he's feeling, it's more than just thoughtless indignation. Ed files away a quick string of observations: _I know it's because of something I saw, or heard. For one, the sound came after the Chief was struck. Much too late. The bullet can't have been what felled her_. _She was built like a bodybuilder._ _One shot to the chest shouldn't have killed her on impact. _

"Now that we've been forced to massacre half of their delegation," says Roy, "and the half that's alive thinks we took out a hit on their war hero," Ed hears a deadness in his tone. It might be defeat. "There's not a single Gorean who won't answer that call to arms. Sorry kids. We're at war now."

"At what? Without an investigation? What if we sent them a delegation, explained to them what happened?" Al pleads.

"It's not that simple. Besides—" he puts a hand up as the brothers look about to pitch in, "—it's not my decision. We can't keep standing here. I have shit to do, and you have to get your affairs in order."

"Our affairs?" Says Ed. "What do you mean our affairs?"

But the Colonel is gone.

Before the crackling of corpses has settled, before the dead have been laid to rest, his words come true. Orders from the very top:

Twenty-three Goreans unaccounted for. Amestris is operating under the assumption that the Gorean motherland knows everything, and that she is furious.

As promised, every Amestrian soldier has three hours to get their affairs in order.

"Just like that." Ed slumps on the steps of a dimmed café, lumps of croissants still stenciled in the glass.

While soldiers said farewell to family and signed wills and slipped pictures of their children into their knapsacks, the brothers had wandered out into the south-east part of the city, with their affairs settled long ago. Settled in the smolders of their childhood home.

"I don't want to fight. Not the Goreans," says Al, "When we do, it's always against people who are threatening us or others. But now we're fighting a whole country, like a whole _country_ of people just like you and I or Riza or Hughes."

"It's wrong." Ed feels it— that _wrongness—_ prickling from his temples to the tip of his toes.

"And Fuery couldn't have…"

"I don't believe it. Whoever planned this shit is laughing their murderous ass off right now."

Streetlights glower, running on gas and moth-dust. Behind, the night is black and textured. He feels as if a hollow moon has settled upon them, plunging them into a dark age where life is elastic and drinks turn to war in the crack of a gun.

"What if we spoke to Roy and made him look into who could have done this? I know it's a bit… a lot of a stretch, but I just don't believe that he's okay with this."

"I don't think he's _okay_ with this, per say. But— remember— he's an Ishvalan veteran. He's got blood on his hands and is somehow still working for the people who made him do it. Someone like that must have a real good reason to keep following orders- or just really well-practiced cognitive dissonance."

"Oh."

"If we're bound by the military, we can't affect the given outcome. Not in the direction we'd like. We're essentially the arms and feet of the Fuhrer, driven sheerly by his will. I know this is fucked, because— I mean, this job, the people— they've been good for you, but—" he is suddenly animated by a painful bout of restlessness which springs him to his feet. "—we can't stay, Al. We really fucking can't."

Silence. Al is stone. When he is still like that, pinned into place by his own resignation, even Ed feels his throat clog. _He looks like a statue._ A real suit of armour that might never move again.

"You're right," he creaks, gently, to life. "Sorry, you're right. There's nothing we can do."

"No, that's not what I'm saying. We _can _do something, just not here. Not as we are now. We need to, what's the word, uh— desert."

"Okay." he nods first with little conviction, then quicker. "Yeah, okay. We'll leave now, and find out who did this, and— and—"

"We'll string them by their shitty little plotting hands. And nip this whole total war thing in the bud."

* * *

It's the next, next morning.

Some sunrise was lost on the curtained train-fugue across increasingly sparse towns and villages. Last night, paranoia-induced insomnia kept them on watch until they'd finally arrived not in _their _countryside, but one with a similar charm: territorial flocks of sheep, flatness for miles, then the lone hearth, alight with the sizzle of stew and candlefire.

One house was dulled. As they approached, unfinished walling shifted out from the nebulous dark. It had been weathered all the way down to its spine on the northwest side, but every other wall had held steadfast. Hulking several dozens of feet higher than the typical chalet, the brothers realized that what they'd originally thought to be the outline of shredded roofing; those were the remnants of gothic spires. This carcass had washed up from a bygone era.

Al was the first to recognize that "it must be from before Amestris."

There was no door to speak of, probably worn down along with the rest of the northwest wall.

When they peered into the building's maw, they saw, haloed by stained glass, an angel on the far wall. Or a sculptor's impressive approximation of one. Centuries of wear and tear didn't seem to have effaced the point of her lance, or the fine layering of her drapery. On the statue's face, the artist had captured a grimace of reluctant benevolence. There was writing at the base, but it was impossible to read.

So Ed went first, then Al followed. The debris of overturned pews crunched at their feet. Ribs and ribs of stone flowed along the church's cavernous insides and gathered into thicker columns at its base.

Finally, the plaque became legible. It was an old dialect of Amestrian, but the basics were intuitive.

In large, gothic letters, it proclaimed:

"SAINT ALTA

SHE WHO—"

There was a stone in the way. Al shifted it.

"SAINT ALTA

SHE WHO BY HER HOLY LANCE

DID NOT KILL US

EVEN THOUGH SHE REALLY COULD HAVE."

That's what sold it for Ed. They'd sleep here on their first night as fugitives. At the foot of a woman powerful, but merciful. A Chief Corne type, if you will.

So, when he wakes, he wakes to the snarkiest smile he's ever seen on an angel. He'd been dreaming and, in that way dreams do, _his _dribbles greedily out of its confines, leaving afterimages of burning men and the tang of bile and ash.

It still feels like he hasn't slept. Just switching in and out of shitty realities.

He tries to nestle deeper into the pew, but its wooden hardness hugs back. Ed hangs his least asleep arm down to feel for his tin can buddy.

"Al, mmtoo sleepy to open eyes, where are you?"

It's echoey, but quiet.

Ed waits a few minutes, then rotates himself off the bench and somewhat upright. It's just him and the statue in the church.

_Maybe he's found another room. _"Brother!"

A sheep bleats. He walks out of the unwalled side, and overlooks hills and hills of rolling green, without a suit of armour in sight.

Ed checks his watch._ 7:00 AM— why the hell would Al be out at the asscrack of dawn?_

He wanders back into their shelter, with no leads. Just some sheep at his heels.

But there Al is: big suit of armour, leaning at the angel's feet.

_I swear he wasn't there before_. Ed rubs his eyes, not even quite believing himself. "Oh god, we're people who _pray_ now?" He calls out.

Al whips around- jittery- like a bomb has gone off. "You— came back."

"Uh, yeah. Either this or running off with… sheep? What are you on about?"

"I thought that you'd— Two years, without a note— Of course I'd—" He's not quite breathing right, hitting ragged patches before he can form full sentences.

"Woah, calm, Al. Calm. Two years, you said. I just woke up."

"Tha— aah— no." Al stops. Shakily, he works his way to the top of an inhale, then all the way back down. Then, he tries words again. "Two years. You— I thought— left two years ago. Then, I went to the city and…" he wavers "... so many people. None of them were you. I had to come back. This— was the last place that _you_—"

"You saw me. Two years ago. No fucking way."

Ed reaches to hold his brother, as much to soothe his own growing panic as Al's. "Shit. Come here. I'm here now. I'm..." But his fingers never press up against metal. He plunges straight through, sunk up to his wrist. "...Here."

Mesmerized by his own immateriality, Al's gasping grows less wobbly.

"Oh," he hiccups, "okay, so I'm dead instead."

* * *

**Thanks for reading ya'll! Pls review! Also, I'm constantly editing this story to try to make it flow better so I'm sorry if it suddenly uh "morphs, changes..." etc. ;)**


	2. Chapter 2- The Library

**Chapter 2: The Split**

* * *

**Days Awake: 1**

"I'm dea— d'nnh." Al's fevered gasping rattles worse against metal flesh. He feels a tightening where his chest should be and becomes aware once again of his own hollowness. He must be dead. This is his coffin.

"Not necessarily! I might be the dead one," offers Ed, burrowing on past Al's initial assumption.

"Don't say that!"

"No, I mean I'm actually thinking this through, and I'm the one with the missing memories apparently." Ed is sober. He's rational. He needs to be, right now. "Isn't it more likely that I've passed, then come back for ghostly vengeance after two years of purgatory— "he catches himself, "I don't believe in the afterlife, I don't." A pause. "Hell, I guess I have to. We have seen shit more warped than this. After homunculi and chimeras, I think I can accept the possibility of a spectral plane."

For now, everything is just a hypothesis. The brothers need proofing.

Al steadies, still feeling for a center of gravity. He holds his palms up, fingertips splayed, against—no, not against, just barely melting into Ed's hands. It almost looks like they're really touching. Ed warms at the illusion.

"Than-hn-k you for being h-here" the little brother says. "For coming back."

"Al— I never left. I would never just up and leave you." A window shutters like their father's last door-slam. "Ever. You know that about me."

A strange expression flits over Al's face and he segues the conversation with the grace of a pattering balloon. "D-did I tell you about the library I saw in town? I feel like it'd be a good place to read 'bout what's happening to us. And b'cause it's been two years it'll be, y'know, the safest in public."

Ed's first instinct is to prod, prod until his brother has shown he hears and agrees with him. _You know that about me, _he would reiterate.

But Al is such an open sore right now. So Ed backs off: "Yeah, sure. Sounds good."

He smooths his week-old clothing. _Sleepwear to daywear._ With his dramatic exit, they hadn't had the time to pack much, or care much—and had rather started to embrace the fugitive aesthetic.

"Let me check something first," says Ed, "the more parameters we uncover, the closer we'll get to the truth."

All he does is grab the top of a pew, making sure its grit really is materializing against his hand. It is. Ed immediately feels more grounded. All these sensations— the leather gripping his toes and the air dampening his tongue—they're real. "The world seems to think I'm alive, which is nice."

Al nods. "Me too! I've petted enough sheep to know." He half-smiles, tinged by melancholy.

That settled, Ed strides out of the church.

"Wait, brother!"

The older brother turns to see Al pantomime opening a door instead of walking through the church's massive gap. He sounds as if he is trying to out-shout the wind: "Brother! You passed straight through the walling I built!"

A throb is burgeoning in Ed's brain. "So I am a ghost, but only for things that you make."

It's becoming clearer and clearer to Ed that an otherworldly rift has been drawn between the two brothers. Al is here, but not really here. One of them has sleepwalked into the other's reality. Who's entered whose? _And when did the split happen in the first place?_

On the road back to the city, that's all he can see: the day war was declared. That crystal, lure-like, full of promise. Stumbling into Chief Corne. Her jaw slack, eyes dead before the whip-crack of gunfire. Beautiful light coating Fuery, soothing him into nonexistence. There is something about that whole day—something wrong. Corne's murder, the war, and now this; it all seems to come back to that damn day.

Al lags behind, the dirt sponging up imprints of his boots alongside already-crusting horse tracks. "That week in the city," he says "they'd already started to draft people to replace all the people dead from the fighting. I don't know what's been happening between us and Goreoo since. I can't- I can't bear to think about Roy and Riza, and Hughes and Armstrong, and…"

For Ed, it has been a few hours since he last saw them. But he gets it. His painful bout of restlessness has subsided and, in the midst of his stubbornness, a ping of yearning bounces about. Staying was always a reversible decision. Deserting was not. Was being a state alchemist that suffocating of an embrace? Was it worth, perhaps, never seeing the squad again?

_Yes._ He tells himself. Ed doesn't like to dwell on shit like the invariable past. He has lived this long because he acts, in every way, as if striking down a coming blow: Decisively.

No matter that Al's statement was a pure expression of concern, not a prompt for Ed to defend his actions. He does anyways: "I don't regret shit. We were never going to buddy off to war with Ishvalan veterans. That was never an option."

"Don't- Ed! I'm disappointed in them too, but they're family and I miss them. They're all we have," urges Al, "and even _they _might be gone."

Any challenge makes Ed double down. "They're active units right now," says Ed, "which means they're shooting, slash burning, slash impaling priests. Probably civilians too, given the Fuhrer's track record."

This argument is starting to sound familiar to both of them. It's the same argument they had before leaving, but with a healthy dose of helplessness.

"Like we're better! We've done terrible things too, brother."

A memory: his mother's eyes encased in the sulfurous heap of her still-twitching remains. "Not… not like that." Ed says, guilt seeping through.

"It's been so hard for all of us. The things we've had to do— all of us, the whole squad. Judging them, it's, we'd have to judge ourselves first."

"Al…"

"They're still our people."

"O-okay. Fine. I do give a shit." Ed's voice even starts to tremble slightly. His chest palpitates as the walls buckle. "I'm just scared, Al. Fuck. I'm really scared. I don't want to think about what's happened to our—our people—in the last two years. About what I could or couldn't have done."

Ed slows, chest heaving inches up and down; boots grinding cobblestones. "If I find out," he pushes a brick of air out, "that anybody we've come to care about is lying ten feet down in some bombed-to-hell backroad, it's going to…" His voice splits like glass on the edge of a countertop. "...break me."

That triggers something in his little brother. "B-break you." Panic attack voice is back.

Ed can tell… after demanding vulnerability from him, Al was now scared to see Ed crack. He needs enough composure for the both of them right now.

He takes a moment to mimic even breathing and a regular gait. "You're good. I'm just saying we made the right decision, and all we can do now is minimize the amount of fuckage the universe has graced us with."

It's met with a vigorous nod. The boy wants to believe. The stars in his eyes keep him alight.

As they approach the urban center, grassy fields are sanded down to smooth, carriage-friendly roads. Chalets clump into ghettos, spilling up against the outskirts of the city. The city skyline cuts low and spread, with a single bell tower splitting through. In the distance, a large sign hangs from its front archway:

"Allkirk!"

Just the name of the town with an exclamation point. Cute and to the point.

Al tries to tug on his brother's shirt, startling himself when he ghosts through the fabric again. Switching gears, he whispers: "Wait. Guards. They're checking papers."

Ed furrows his brow and bites his tongue. "Guards. You see guards."

"Oh man."

"Yeah."

"Not even people, brother?"

"I think it's everything, Al. Everything is different. What does the sign say for you?"

"Uhh… Zone 85, I think. Man, it's really well guarded."

'Zone'? Zone. Oh. A theory clicks into place for Ed. But he needs to test it first.

Farther up the path, an elderly merchant waggles along with a cart full of cabbages. Ed shakes the dew from his cape and starts after him with a jog. "Hey!"

"Helluh boy!" The man's withered limbs are animated by a youthful vigor. "Comin' to see dee Sunday market?" He smiles a toothless smile, cigar askew. "Deese beaudies are always de first do go."

"I don't doubt you for a second." Ed smiles. Something about the man reminds Ed of Winry's grandmother. Of home. "Just wondering which Sunday it is. Ma always says blueberries are freshest the second week of October."

"Smart young man! Dis is Ocdober Nine." The man's cigar sizzles, struggling to stay alight.

"Year?" Ed adds. "I, uh, keep forgetting."

"Younguns!" He barks gummily, permanently riled up. "Year of our Fuhrer, ninedeen den."

_1910 _. Relief floods him so suddenly that he feels his head about to dissipate in the warm air. He gives a quick wave and wishes the man luck, watching him waddle away on his stout little legs.

"I, um, think I just watched you talk to grass," says Al.

"Al! We're unfucked! Ha, it was actually a charming old man," says Ed, "who confirmed my theory." A thrill fills him, as deductions cascade in his mind. "I'm still in 1910. It's been only a few days after Corne's murder and—"

"The war! It hasn't happened!"

Ed looks about, like someone could hear Al yell. But the road is bare for miles. "For me, yes. Not yet."

The weight of what he doesn't say hangs in the air:_ It has for you._ Ed doesn't know if that can change.

"You'll save 'em. The Goreans too." The little brother latches onto this most anointed of truths. So real it becomes in his mind, that it feels it's a thing- no, the _only _thing- that holds real weight in this world. A precious nugget. One he could roll between his fingers and tuck into his pocket.

"Yes, but we're on a very short timeline. Even if I can expose the truth, once real damage is done by either side, the catalyst won't even matter anymore." Though Ed is grave, parsing out the logistics means he is intent on making this happen.

"We've also got this," He continues, his arm slicing effortlessly across Al's chest of armour, "and I'm afraid that going to sleep again will trigger something similar to what's already happened, just worse."

With every threat imminent, the brothers settle on the first task at hand. They need to get into town. Ed can simply stroll in but breaching the heavily patrolled perimeter isn't as easy for Al. Eventually, he squeezes himself through a gash in the fencing, by dismantling himself piece by piece and army-crawling through. A flesh-and-bones human would have been shredded by the barbed wire, but Al's armour is mostly just scuffed. As he puts himself back together, Ed notes that he can actually see the marks on his armour.

Once inside, the city silhouette folds to life, as a charming vista on the cusp of gentrification. Broad streets fill with midday warmth. Every path is a sidewalk— or an alleyway, with produce-crowded carts pushing up against the sides. They're manned by locals—men and women in ruddy coats, who phase through Al's armour and reappear—oblivious.

"Cabbages," Ed hears the old man say, his cart offering a singular variety of green. "Ged yer cabbages."

"Getcha cabb-euh-ges from here," a woman calls out, louder, fanning herself with a thick offshoot of her product, "They ain't crusted with _horse fly shit. _And we put more _love_ int-eh them."

"We used do date," mutters the old man as Ed passes by.

Ed notices that some customers are these slicked-hair couples, laced and ruffled in that expensive, but passé way. Their heels and boots tick cleanly alongside the muddy slosh of his shoes. Emerging out of their white-walled villas, they lavish merchants with handfuls of coins for a few jars and bundles of product, then slink back where they came from, their shawls jangling up against him.

Al sees and hears none of this. His glassy gaze fixes on the unseen. He pauses at one house, exhales, then moves on, with a fidget in his step. "There's no one in the streets for me. Every house is boarded up. It's a wasteland."

The older brother is watched, so he just nods. _Two years into the war, this thriving little town will shrivel up_. He imagines the frenzied exodus of wealth and wartime hysteria that would produce Al's reality.

Turning to him, Al says: "Brother… that library, I'll get to know all the events of the war for the next two years. I'll know everything, and that'll help a lot I think." He's saying this, but he hasn't stopped his nervous little tapdance.

Ed gives him a light touch. _'Are you sure?_' He mouths. _Maybe he's too afraid of knowing what's happened._

"I can, mm, I can do this. I can help. I want to help."

_Okay_. Ed nods. It's a brilliant idea, after all. Detective work should be easier with time travel.

Al takes off quicker, moth to an invisible light. But while Al floats past the crowd with ease, Ed must stop and speed between stalls to catch up, butting into a cluster of hanging gourds and root vegetables. A magnetic necklace suctions to his automail arm. "Seems like the bugger likes ya," says the vendor, "it's yours for five." Ed shakes his head in apology and ducks between a shawled couple.

"Brother," he hisses, but Al lumbers on in his suit of armour, seeming far too preoccupied to notice. His eyes catch spire after spire of nothingness.

What could he be seeing? Ed looks real hard at the storefront, the door, or the bench that have Al so rapt, trying to deduce their fate in two years time.

Finally, the armoured brother halts, stumbling into a kneel before the foot of a small villa. His knees sink wetly into the pavement.

"There's s-so many," says Al.

Ed peels himself away from the crowd and crouches down too, trying not to let women's leather heels trample him. "What are we looking at," he says.

"Flowers... um, Pictures. A ring… A note that says—" Ed hears him choke and wince before continuing "um, 'you already took one, please don't take the— I mean, _our_ other.' They're at every second doorstep."

_Every second doorstep? What's the scale of this thing? _Thinks Ed. Somehow, until now, this all felt more like an ethical dilemma; a professorial lecture happening within the confines of his head. Dead children weren't so fucking theoretical.

His little brother stirs, eyes aglow with childish yearning. "Brother, um. I need a hug. A real one."

_Oh fuck_. Ed's heart breaks into the tiny little shards that sugar free candy are made of. _Jesus, ask me why Santa isn't coming his year, will you? _"Al. It's, like, physiologically impossible."

"I need a hug. A hug." Al ventures a hand to flatten his tears, but it doesn't quite fit, grinding squeakily against his metal socket. "Sorry. Is-s-stupid. Amhm useless."

"You're not. Everything is okay." Ed says, unsheathing his big brother voice as everything screamed it was _not _okay_. _

He searches, quick, for a shiny thing to throw the child. "Hey, I just realized." He mocks surprise. "You're fourteen now, right? Guess what?" Despite efforts not to be patronizing, his lilt turns from gentle to strangely pet-ish. "When we get your body back and we return to Central, you'll be just old enough to walk right up to the gates of 'Vunderland' and, well, they'll let you right in. You can try the candy apples, and the water park, and the turning bear- horse things. How about that?"

Al grins, sweet-as-pie, through the vicious eye-rubbing. "Mmyes." A lazy nod. "Sounds so, so good."

His innocence stings the older brother. _He's still... twelve_, Ed realizes. _Mentally. He hasn't gotten to grow at all. If anything, he's reverted a little. Those two years in solitary..._

Ed wants to say more, but two women are already staring at him through the plume of their hats. Chatter brews. '_Come on, Al!_' He mannequins beaming confidence and leads Al, sheep-like, into a quieter alleyway, towards the library. They pass tucked-away houses, shops with entry bells that jangle too loud; bars which offer tabletop wine, always dented by whichever family member has been tending to the business for the noon'. In one bend, children notice Ed and hurry to stash their uncle's cigarettes in hands between their knees. _It's a small town after all, no matter its girth and_, Ed thinks, _no matter how loaded the visitors._

Which makes it easy to find the library: this imposing, centrally-located bastion, kept unchained by private funding and visitor donations. Romanesque carvings—and an overhang with "_salva veritate" _scrolled across—earmark it as a unique institution. Just pristine. And Ed guesses the next two years won't be kind to it.

Al confirms this by shaking his head in its direction and almost walking away. It's like herding a soulless husk through purgatory when Ed waves him back. "What happened?"

"It's useless, just mostly burnt to the crisp."

"Mostly burnt to a crisp? We might still be able to salvage something. Come on now."

Ed calculates that his timeline might have some resources on Truth Teller and on Gorean magic in general. And Al's library would hopefully have scraps of war news. With nowhere to start, it's worth taking a look.

As soon as they're inside, Ed notes the dry musk of wood and paper. Its built tall and cool— like a cellar for the suspension of knowledge. A desk barrs off book stacks. Behind it, a man clacks books open and close with clinical exactitude.

"Weeelcome," he drones, "to the largest collection of literary works on this side of Amestris. Please keep your fingers dry and the spines of your volumes unbent as you rifle through our collection. Thank you."

_Well. That doesn't seem to be a conversation, _thinks Ed, keeping quiet and entering the rows. Al follows closely behind, stepping more gingerly over his time's burnt wreckage.

There's a section on 'Foreign Science and Phenomena' which Ed takes to. He slips out a few volumes:

**'The Rise of Goreoo: Hidden Alchemic Potential' **

**'Chronicle of Gorean Practices from 1800-1910'**

**'Pagan Worship or True Power'**

And then a thin booklet, which Ed is most excited about, called **'Religious Rites — Spero.' **There's a photograph inside: of Truth Teller, which loses a lot of its ever-morphing magic in flat black-and-white. _Truth Teller, now Spero. Everyone has a different name for this crystal_, he remarks.

"Did you find anything in 1912?" Asks Ed.

"Sorry, brother, I can't find anything. It's all black, there's not even one piece of paper."

"Bookcases?"

"Hmm, actually they're pretty okay. Many are still up."

"Okay, yeah." Ed feels up the smooth, flammable oak of the shelf before him. He combs a thumb through papyrus pages. "It doesn't make sense that there's nothing, not even a single sheet left."

The little brother pounces to agree: "Yes it doesn't make sense!" But then he fades into a mutter. "Uh, it doesn't make sense?"

"The building is partly burnt, you said. The bookcases, the general structure of the place- still intact. So why _isn't _there-" All around him, the wood hums to Ed with a secret. "-a single piece of writing?" He flourishes the moment with a pause. "Well. I think someone saved the books."

"Who would—" Al's body tenses. "Hello?"

Al peers into a shaded aisle, but his whole body looks coiled to run. "Yes, that's me. Who are you?" Silence, with Al nodding. Ed tries to speak but is shot a pleading look. He waits as his little brother points and cocks his head.

Then, Al speaks again. But not to Ed. "Yes! Let's go!" He says off to the side, starting to pass through a bookcase.

But before he disappears, the little brother turns to Ed and breaks into a smile. A real, tearless smile on his metal mug. The bolts themselves won't bend to form one, but in Ed's eyes, he may as well be stuck in a full-cheeked grin.

And he smiles his favourite words all day:

"Great news! Libraries are a cult. And Fuery is alive."


End file.
